Tag Archives: Max Bygraves

I apologise for today’s posts title. For some reason while I was doing a very slow walk with Real Live Rocking Dog the song lyrics “From a Jack To A King” came into my little brain, very strange, very true! I continued my walk quietly humming the song, wrestling with just who did sing it in yesteryear. I came up wrongly with Max Bygraves and then all the horrible memories of Saturday TV came back. Saturday Night at the Palladium, Dick Emery, Val Doonican,The Black & White Minstrel Show etc… etc… Yep, even then they thought that everyone suddenly lost their brain on Saturday’s and weren’t capable of coping with a gritty drama, documentary or good film. Agggghhh! Something’s never ever change.

Back home having Googled “From A Jack To A King” I think it was probably Slim Whitlam’s version I was remembering. Sorry you will have probably lost the will to live by now!

Yesterday’s little project, because I was still behaving, was to reconfigure a top into a bag. A little bit of a conundrum that Sorrel bravely left me with on a recent visit.

The top in question had been bought for £5 at a recent sample sale. Sorrel could not resist the textural crocheted quality of this garment (that’s my girl!!). Ridiculously tiny, she bought it in the knowledge that it would need to be Sewing Bee’d into something else. She came up with the idea of a chic string bag, and so the project was left with me. I am sure Sorrel was sadly confident that the top would be mulled over, cast aside and then eventually abandoned on Material Mountain! Therefore, she will be somewhat shocked today to find that The Dog has stitched and not bitched the top into a bag!

I came up with a cunning plan over a cup of coffee and a bit of Elgar mixed with Slim’, Elvis and Ibuprofen. I’m not going to give the explicit details of how I went about completing the task but I hope the photo’s give you a little flavour of how I went about it. In short, I reinforced the straps with bias binding to create the bag straps and up cycled some lovely Designer’s Guild silk for a strong inner liner prior to sewing the bottom hem of the crochet top.

Voila! The bag is ready to be laden with everything my modern business woman daughter wishes. Purse, Oyster card, keys, lippy,…… sweet potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, squid, figs etc.. Working for Abel & Cole this bag will be no chici little number!

Whatever you are doing this weekend, have a great one and I hope that you are able to brave Saturday night TV better than I can ever do!